Name: Hannah from Womb to World Art
Baby Name: Rosalie
Weight: 7lbs 7oz
Birthday: September 2021
Gestation: 41+5
Location of Birth: Oxfordshire UK

Birth trauma healing - planned spiritual home birth 🔀 to elective caesarian 🔜 to surprise vaginal birth!

My first planned home birth didn't go to plan, and resulted in a long back-to-back labour with little progress, an emergency transfer after her heart rate showed concerns, an emergency forceps birth, PPH, 3a tear, then a 10-day NICU stay with meconium aspiration syndrome and sepsis. We are both still working to heal this trauma.

birth pool with twinkle lights and flowers

Since becoming a mother, and learning about the kind of conscious parent I wanted to be myself, I discovered that my life-long battle with mental health problems, suicide attempts and self-harm wasn't because I was inherently 'broken' - but due to childhood trauma. And I had realisations about what had impacted my birth the first time (despite my thorough preparations and passion for physiological birth). Becoming a mother has really been the key to my deeper healing, and I have been reborn.

When I became pregnant with my second child, I once again threw myself into enjoying a positive pregnancy and preparation for a home birth. I worked with a healing birth doula, and started a sacred intimacy mentorship - which turned out to be the first step in uncovering the authentic spiritual, creative, colourful self which I'd been conditioned to keep hidden all my life.

After working through my chakras and learning holistic practices to nurture myself, honour my boundaries and connect to the earth and the universe - I finally felt able to connect with my inner child, and my life quickly started to change in huge ways. My plans for birth became focused on feeling supported and guided by the universe at my crown, and feeling held and loved by mother earth at my root. I felt that the key to my surrendering to my own power - despite the trauma from birth and childhood - would be to focus on how I was fundamentally loved and supported by life. I felt as my belly grew I was blossoming in myself - learning to feel safe taking up space, being my true self, enforcing my boundaries, changing how I looked to feel like the person I'd always been underneath - and I started painting, finally making the Etsy shop I'd conceived of with my first pregnancy but felt too disempowered to make happen.

Selfie with our lotus midwife as we walked to theatre

But when it came to Rosie's birth I found I wasn't able to surrender to my surges. I see now that they brought back the fear and torment of Maggie's long labour, seemingly-endless fearful surges and the terrifying separation and illness after birth. After speaking with our doula (whose own healing birth was an elective caesarian) I told our lotus midwife that I didn't feel I could survive it mentally, and I wanted a surgical birth. To choose a caesarean was a previously unthinkable choice - but it was made possible by my respect for our doula and her own testament that I would be able to accept my decision, my 'failure' again at an unassisted, unmedicalised birth.

But - the universe had other plans! As soon as I decided to have a surgical birth, my surges died down completely (or so I thought…) and as we travelled to the hospital and waited in delivery suite for the caesarean, the surges barely troubled me.

Mom with purple hair holding newborn baby

A few hours after arriving, we were called through to the operating theatre, but when we got there they said they weren't ready after all as the porter hadn't taken my blood to the lab. Moments after walking back in the door to the delivery suite - she was coming! No-one had any idea that labour had progressed, and definitely not to the point of no return. I began jumping up and down to try to dispel the downward force as I suddenly was in transition - and the midwives said they’d need to do a vaginal exam because they couldn’t do a caesarean if she was close - which they did while I stood up jumping. One moment I was putting on makeup for photos after she was born by caesarean - and the next she was being born! My second stage was 10 minutes long. Just before she was born I remember saying to my lotus midwife ‘this is going to make a great story!’. I sang her out, long high notes, and the midwives said it was beautiful to hear.

Woman with blue hair and flower crown holding Chakras for Birth artwork

I believe now that the universe was showing me that I AM guided and supported. Because I was led to find the people that would make it possible to choose the one thing I thought I'd never choose - and make the one choice that would actually allow my birth to progress naturally. The universe helped me to make the only choice I could make to feel safe to let my surges progress. So it may not have been the spiritual crown chakra themed home birth I had in mind - but it was certainly divinely guided.